The University of
North Carolina
HerbariumA Department of the North Carolina Botanical Garden

Collectors of the UNC HerbariumInformation for this page compiled by
Carol Ann McCormick, Asst. Curator, NCU

Edward
Willis Graves
(24 February 1882 – 1936)

The University of North Carolina Herbarium has
catalogued to date 8 specimens collected by Graves, who signed his specimens
“E.W. Graves.”Most were gifts to NCU
in 2002 from the Jesup Herbarium of Dartmouth
College (HNH).Six specimens are
ferns, two are orchids.The specimens
were collected between 1915 and 1918 from Alabama and Tennessee.

Graves had a peripatetic nature.He was born in Clearmont,
Nodaway County, Missouri to John T. and Martha Graves on 24 February 1882.2As
an adult he lived in Clay County, Kansas; Long Island, Jackson County,
Alabama; and Bentonsport and Stockport, Van Buren
County, Iowa.He was married to Lillie
B. (b. 5 August 1881 at King City, MO) and had two sons, Harold L. (b. 19
October 1907 at Clay Center, KS) and Ralph M. (b. ca. 1919).The 1930 census lists his profession as
“farmer.”2,3

His interest in the outdoors developed at an early
age and his interest in botany, ferns in particular, somewhat later.“In August [1908] I made a trip to
northwest Missouri to visit my old home of my boyhood days.I remembered I had seen growing in the
woods the maidenhair and two other ferns, which at the time I did not know
the names of.While in Missouri I
hunted the woods and dug up clumps of the maidenhair and the two others which
proved to be Cystopterisfragilis
and Athyriumfilix-femina,
and by the help of a friend I found Onocleasensibilis.These
four ferns are the only ferns I have found in Nodaway Co., Mo., and I have
searched the woods carefully during my boyhood days…I took good roots of all four of the ferns
from Missouri with me to Kansas and set them in my fern bed.This was my beginning of a fern garden,
also my beginning of the real study of ferns… In December [1908] I moved from
Kansas to Long Island, Ala., taking all my ferns with me.I located on Sand Mountain plateau, the
soil of which is very sandy, and is covered principally with heavy
timber.To my delight I found the
woods were full of ferns of different kinds.Before the spring I had made out about a dozen different kinds from
the dead fronds...I derive much
pleasure from my fern garden as I have many ferns growing near at hand for study, that otherwise I would have to go several miles to
see.” 1

E.W. Graves was a member of the American Fern
Society, and the 1917 membership roll lists his address as Long Island
[Jackson County], Alabama.Both his
registration for the draft (dated 12 September 1918)4 and his 1919
paper on Botrychium
give his address as Spring Hill [Mobile County], Alabama.

In his paper, “The fern flora of Alabama,”
Graves states, “I have spent ten years in [Alabama], collecting in the
following Counties:Jackson, DeKalb,
Marshall, Madison, Morgan, Etowah, Blount, Jefferson, Walker, Winston, Culman, Colbert, and Lauderdale, in the mountain district
of the north part of the State; Baldwin, Clark, and Mobile, of the southwest;
and Perry and Hale counties in the central district of the States.”He continues, “Jackson and DeKalb counties
within whose borders are some of the highest and roughest mountains of the
State, and which extend farthest north, and Mobile county, where is found the
lowest swampy ground and which extends farthest south, is where I have done
most of my collecting… I have sent duplicates of almost all the ferns I have
collected in Alabama, to the Herbarium of the American Fern Society.”His address at the end of this article from
1920 is Bentonsport, Iowa.Graves’ 1922 paper on botanizing in Cuba
gives his home as Stockport, Iowa.

In 1919 Graves travelled to Cuba to
botanize.He was accompanied by his
wife and son, Harold.“For a number of
years it had been my great desire to make a trip to the tropics, and see for
myself some of the beauties of tropical verdure.Not until the fall of 1919 was this
privilege given me.Two years before I
had tried for a passport, but as the war was on, and as all ablebodied men were needed at home, it was refused
me.But in October, 1919, I succeeded
in getting Lansing’s signature to the necessary papers … I have presented a
set of the ferns collected by me to the National Museum [US] and a set, with
a few exceptions, to the [American Fern] Society.Of some very scarce species I collected
only a very few specimens.In the
short time I was on the island [of Cuba] I found only fifty-two species.”

In 1918 pteridologist
William R. Maxon named a hybrid between Aspleniumbradleyi
and A. pinnatifidum
in E.W. Graves’ honor.The type
specimen of Asplenium
x gravesii
is in the National Herbarium in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington,
D.C.NCU has a single specimen of Asplenium x gravesii.It was collected on 16 July 1959 on Battleship
Rock, Natural Bridges State Park in Powell County, Kentucky by R. Haven
Wiley.

A new hybidAsplenium[excerpts]
by William R. Maxon
American Fern Journal 8(1):1-3.
(1918)

Among the ferns forwarded to the National
Museum for identification during the past year are the very interesting
specimens forming the subject of this article.They were collected from sandstone cliffs
of Sand Mountain, about two and one-half miles west of Trenton, Georgia, by
Mr. E.W. Graves.The first ones sent
in were regarded doubtfully by Mr. Graves as an aberrant form or variety of Aspleniumpinnatifidum.In the light of further field study,
however, and from examination of the additional specimens secured, it appears
nearly certain that this form is instead a natural hybrid between Aspleniumbradleyi
and A. pinnatifidum,
with which it habitually grows.

At the request of Mr. Graves the hybrid is described below.It is a pleasure to commemorate in this
connection the name of the persistent and discriminating collector.

AspleniumgravesiiMaxon, hybr. nov.

Type specimen in the U.S. National Herbarium
[US], no.764407, collected on Sand Mountain, about 2 ˝ miles west of Trenton
[Dade County], Georgia, on sandstone cliffs, September, 1917, by Mr. E.W. Graves.It was found growing singly in the middle
of a clump of A. pinnatifidum.

That
the hybrid here described has remained so long undetected may be owing partly to the comparative rarity of A. bradleyi
and partly to the fact that it and A. pinnatifidum possibly do not often occur in close proximinty, in spite of their nearly coextensive
ranges.Aspleniumgravesii is represented in the
National Herbarium [US] only by Mr. Graves’ recent specimens.